The title of this poem is "reading history", which shows that it is not aimed at a specific historical figure or event, but at the whole history, so it has greater artistic generalization and wider reference significance. In this poem, the sadness and decline of the sages revealed by him shows his profound suspicion and critical spirit, but this sadness belongs not only to the sages, but also to the author himself.
Wang Anshi is both a poet and a politician. After he entered politics, he actively promoted the new law, aiming to make the weak stronger. But at that time, some people criticized this reform, and he was even more helpless. He himself can't help but feel deeply worried about this. It is the author's own way of life that has been discovered and cast into the creation of this poem, expressing his complex feelings of sadness, doubt and anger through the sorrow of the ancients.
The author of this poem is completely emotional, but the spirit of doubt and criticism of books it shows is undoubtedly of universal philosophical significance. Books are the crystallization of predecessors' experience, wisdom and sweat. Therefore, in order to inherit the precious spiritual heritage of our predecessors and enrich our knowledge, we must read widely. However, books are not the correct reflection of objective laws. There are high and low points, and there are true and false points. Therefore, we must be good at distinguishing and criticizing inheritance when reading.
The predecessors said that "it is better to believe in books than to have no books", and it really happened! Therefore, we should always keep a sober critical spirit in reading, and we should not cover everything, pass on the false and the true wrongly, or even make mistakes for the sake of books; Only by choosing and absorbing with skeptical rational eyes can we turn other people's achievements into our own flesh and blood, enrich ourselves and develop ourselves. This is the philosophical enlightenment of this poem.